From the 10th of December 2006 till 7th of January 2007, Morocco was my venue, a fantastic month of wandering the deserts and mountains from Marrakech southward. Seeing the majority of target birds and specialities, the sites visited included many of the famous localities, such as Merzouga, the Tagdilt Track and Oued Massa, plus a trip down into the far south of Western Sahara.

For convenience of reading, I have divided this report into two halves: 

The Southern Loop - two weeks with a rented car, covering the classic Moroccan birding localities from the Sahara in the east, the High Atlas mountains and the coastal spots north and south of Agadir.

Western Sahara and Coastal Birding - all by public transport or hitch-hiking, the second two weeks of the trip saw me exploring the lesser known parts of Western Sahara, travelling as far south as Dakhla, a bare whisper from the Tropic of Cancer. With time to spare, I also revisited all the well-known coastal spots north and south of Agadir.

Rarely visited and little known, this arid portion of the world does not feature on the itinerary of many birders. The reasons are not difficult to understand - as well as the simmering military conflict and the almost total lack of birding information, there is also the issue of distances ...they are vast, everywhere is very far from everywhere else!  

For the adventurous birder though, the attraction is clear -  Dakhla in particular, and the southern deserts in general, offer the possibility of birds more typical of the Afrotropics. Royal Tern is near guaranteed and Black-crowned Finchlark have been recorded, reasons enough to see me travelling the 1400 km south to the Tropic of Cancer, about as far south as you can go without actually entering Mauritania.